


Unmasked

by glorious_spoon



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, First Kiss, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Shaving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:22:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24234256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: Illya is not dead. All of his injuries will heal. There is no reason for Napoleon to be looking at him with that careful, gentle expression on his face.Or: Illya is captured and tortured, and Napoleon helps him put himself back together in the aftermath.
Relationships: Illya Kuryakin/Napoleon Solo
Comments: 36
Kudos: 353
Collections: Hurt Comfort Exchange 2020





	Unmasked

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AMintJulep](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AMintJulep/gifts).



> For AMintJulep, from the prompts _Character with injured hands requires assistance_ and _Character recovering from torture gets taken care of by the person they're pining for_.

The razor slips, scoring a thin bloody line down the edge of his jaw. Illya curses softly through his teeth and sets it carefully down on the edge of the sink before he can drop it. His hand is starting to shake again; he flexes his fingers, then curls them into a fist, trying to crush the tremor out. This is already hard enough to do left-handed; there’s no need to compound the problem.

His traitorous fingers don’t obey him. The bathroom is damp and warm and full of steam; he had the shower as hot as it would go, trying to ease the soreness out of his battered muscles, but it didn’t really work. There’s a pill jar on the edge of the sink next to his shaving cream, but he’s less than confident in his ability to open it one handed, and entirely confident that the last thing he wants right now is to be drugged and helpless. Pain is better.

He flexes his hand again. Breathes in, then out. The tremors start to ease, and he reaches for the towel to pat at the still-bleeding cut on his cheek.

Of course, Napoleon chooses that moment to knock lightly on the bathroom door. “Peril? You okay in there?”

“Fine,” Illya says shortly.

His hand has started shaking again. His reflection in the mirror is obscured by condensation, but even so he can tell that it’s paler than it should be. He doesn’t need Napoleon to see him like this. Not after Napoleon found him in that cell, naked and bloody and strapped to a table—

“Are you decent?” Napoleon asks. He doesn’t wait for an answer. The doorknob rattles; Illya locked it, but the cheap hotel lock wouldn’t stand up to a determined child with a screwdriver, let alone a professional thief, and it’s the work of seconds for Napoleon to get it open. He pauses with his hand on the frame, his sharp eyes catching at Illya’s bloody cheek, his clenched hand, the razor open on the edge of the sink in a puddle of pink-tinged shaving cream.

“Ah,” he says softly.

Illya looks away, humiliated. “You need something, Cowboy?”

“Just making sure you didn’t drown in the bathtub.”

“I’m fine. As I said.”

“Clearly,” Napoleon says, stepping into the room. “Not easy shaving with your off hand, is it?”

Illya feels his battered right hand twitch, threads of pain shooting up from the broken joints, the raw nail-beds where his fingernails were torn out barely an afterthought. It’s nothing that won’t heal, in time. He should, perhaps, be grateful that Napoleon and Gaby found him before they could start on his other hand. Before they could make use of any of the other implements that Albert Köhler left out on the table for him to contemplate.

Köhler is dead. Illya watched him fall with the hole from Napoleon’s bullet blooming bright and bloody in the place of his left eye. He’s dead, and Illya is here, and all of his injuries will heal. There is no reason for Napoleon to be looking at him with that careful, gentle expression on his face.

“I’ll manage,” he says, and turns back to the mirror, picking up the razor. He doesn’t want to attempt this again with Napoleon watching, but anything else feels like defeat.

“I’m sure you could, if you had to. All I’m saying is that you don’t have to. I’ll help, if you’d like.”

“Help?”

Napoleon nods toward the razor in Illya’s hand. “If you’d like.”

Illya follows his gaze. Considers the gleaming blade, already blooded, the prospect of Napoleon holding it to his throat. He’s not willing to consider, let alone name, the feeling that goes through him at that idea. He’s tempted to throw Napoleon out of the room and wedge the decorative filigree chair under the knob to make sure he stays out this time. Instead, for no reason he can explain to himself, he nods shortly. “Fine.”

“Gracious as always, Peril,” Napoleon says with a sharp grin, moving into the room. “Have you got a towel—oh, there it is. Here. Sit down before you fall down.”

“I’m not going to fall down.”

“Of course not. Humor me anyway, please. I spent entirely too much effort and worry on getting you out of that hellhole to be comfortable with the idea of accidentally slitting your throat in your own hotel room because your knees gave out at an inopportune moment. Besides,” he adds, lifting the razor lightly out of Illya’s unresisting grip and turning the faucet on. “The paperwork would be murder.”

“Since when do you do paperwork?” Illya retorts, sinking onto the edge of the tub. The tile wall is still warm against his bare back, damp bleeding through his pajama pants. He watches as Napoleon rinses the blade and lays out the rest of the supplies, moving with a quick and deliberate kind of confidence. “Have you done this before?”

“Shaved? Surprisingly, yes. Every morning.”

Illya huffs, exasperated, but he can’t deny that the normalcy of bickering with Napoleon has settled him some. He doesn’t know how much of that is intentional: how much of Napoleon’s light good humor is one of his masks that he seems able to slip on and discard at will. Illya still remembers that blazing, furious look on his face when he stormed into the bunker. How pale he’d been when he undid the straps, how gentle his hands were.

“Have you done this before for someone else.”

“A time or two.”

He doesn’t elaborate. Illya doesn’t ask. He watches as Napoleon flips the clean towel over his shoulder and pours shaving cream into his hand, turning back toward him. His left hand has started to rattle again on his knee; he grips the joint firmly to still it as Napoleon approaches. The look on his face is thoughtful, methodical, as though Illya is a safe that needs cracking. His hands are warm and gentle as he tilts Illya’s chin up.

“Rest your head back—there. Perfect. Just like a barber shop.”

“I don’t go to barber shops.”

“More capitalist decadence, I suppose?” Napoleon says, and smears shaving cream on so that Illya can’t answer without getting a mouthful of the stuff. He turns briefly to rinse his hands and pick up the razor. He seems comfortable with it, at least, though Illya has only ever seen him use safety razors. One finger resting on the tang, the others on the blunt edge of the steel. Illya closes his eyes again as Napoleon’s fingers land on his cheekbone, pulling the skin tight with one hand and dragging the blade down with the other. “You could stand to live a little, Peril.”

Illya can’t retort, which seems unfair. Without the comfort of that to fall back on, he’s too aware of the warmth of Napoleon’s fingers, the smell of his expensive cologne over the antiseptic tang of shaving cream. The sound of his breathing.

“Pull your lips in,” Napoleon says eventually, and Illya obeys, feels the blade slip around his mouth in short strokes, the sharp cold on his damp skin. He was in that room for the better part of three days, and it's a relief to feel the evidence of that scrape away beneath Napoleon’s knowledgeable hands, even though something about the whole thing feels as though he’s stepped off the edge of a cliff and hasn’t stopped falling yet.

“So,” Napoleon says conversationally as he works carefully around the stinging cut from Illya’s earlier efforts. “Gaby is dealing with Waverly, so I suppose it falls to me to let you know that the current mission is indefinitely suspended. Officially, that is.”

He lifts the blade from Illya’s cheek, and Illya says, “Officially. What about unofficially?”

“Mm, yes. About that. Unofficially, I shot Herr Köhler in the face instead of trying to bring him in for interrogation, and Waverly is extremely cross with me at the moment. I don’t know if you remember. You were… indisposed.”

The doctor, falling with a bloody hole where his eye had been, the pliers falling from his hand to clatter on the concrete floor. Beyond him, Napoleon, gun in hand, eyes blazing.

Köhler was a small man with a smile that seemed ghoulish in their briefing photos and worse in real life; he clacked the pliers together with the gleeful air of a child at play in between each fingernail he removed and took the time to carefully explain what every tool on his workbench was, and how he intended to use them. None of it would have been fatal. That was the worst part. Illya closes his eyes. “I remember.”

Napoleon stills briefly. “Ah.”

“Will that cause problems for you?”

“Gaby will talk Waverly around. She always does. Tilt your chin up just a bit more.”

Illya obeys without opening his eyes or making any attempt to explain that this is not really his concern. He doesn’t even know what is, really. Napoleon’s warm fingers hold his chin carefully as he slides the blade down. The underside of his jaw, his Adam’s apple, the pulse point in his throat where the skin is thin and it would take only the slightest amount of pressure to open up an artery.

“At any rate, I’m glad we found you in time. And I’m not the least bit sorry that I shot him, although I probably should be.” Napoleon’s voice is very even. Illya wants to open his eyes to look at him, but he knows that if he did, Napoleon’s face would be another one of his smooth, perfect masks. The press of his fingers against the hinge of Illya’s jaw feels like it holds the truth, though. Napoleon takes a breath, as though he’s considering saying more, then doesn’t. The blade lifts; he pulls back. A moment later, water splashes in the sink, and he returns with a wet cloth. He runs it over Illya’s face to rinse away the last of the shaving cream, then pats him dry with the towel. “There you are. Good as new.”

“Thank you,” Illya says. It comes out thick, as though there’s something knotted in the back of his throat.

“Anytime.” There’s another clink of glass, followed by the sharp scent of aftershave. Illya wants to protest that he can certainly manage this part himself, but instead he holds still as Napoleon’s warm hands smooth aftershave onto his cheeks.

It seems, Illya thinks, as though he’s lingering over the task more than it needs. His skin still stinging from the alcohol, he opens his eyes. Napoleon is leaning over him, with his warm hands and his curly hair and the absurd little cleft in his chin, his eyes serious and worried as he looks down at Illya, and Illya thinks, wretchedly— _oh._

That’s what it is, then. That thread drawing him into Napoleon’s orbit, that desperate twisting warmth, the fact that he feels _safe_ here, in this moment when he is assuredly not safe—that’s what it is. He feels somehow as though he should have noticed the fall at some point before he hit the ground, but it’s too late for that now. He feels flushed and wide awake, and Napoleon is looking at him with thoughtful blue eyes that see entirely too much. Napoleon, whose gift is learning where people’s buttons are, and how to push.

“Ah,” he says finally, “like that is it?”

Then he sets the towel down, leans forward, and presses a kiss to Illya’s mouth.

It’s careful, but not chaste. His warm hands bracket Illya’s newly smooth cheeks, tilting his jaw up; his mouth is hot and skillful. Illya makes a small, broken sound that Napoleon swallows; his good hand finds its way to the back of Napoleon’s neck, the warm skin and the shorn hair at his nape. Even with his off hand, he could kill a man with this grip. Napoleon must know that, but he makes no effort to pull away.

Illya’s heart is pounding, his blood thin and hot. For a single perfect moment Napoleon seems to be the only thing that exists in the world. Even the memory of that horrible little cell has fallen away, his senses overwhelmed, and it’s that thought, of all thoughts, that makes him pull back, breaking the kiss.

“What is it?” Napoleon asks softly into the space between them. He’s so close that Illya can see the fine lines at the corners of his eyes, the faint dilation of his pupils. Napoleon, who is so good at people. Who understands the value of a distraction.

“If this is just—” He stops, then says, “I don’t need to be—managed.”

“I don’t know if I ought to be flattered or offended by that.” If he’s offended, it isn’t enough to make him pull away. There’s still a smile curled into the corner of his mouth, warmth in his eyes.

“It was not an insult.”

“But I do have a reputation,” Napoleon agrees. He sighs; this close, Illya can feel the warmth of his breath. “There’s nothing I can say that couldn’t be a lie.”

“True.” Napoleon is a fine liar; Illya has known that from the very beginning. But he’s already decided months ago to trust his reckless, quicksilver American; there’s no undoing that now. “If you tell me that you want this, then I’ll believe you.”

“I want this,” Napoleon says immediately. There’s a breathless edge of laughter in his voice that makes him seem—younger, somehow. “God, Peril. Illya. You have no idea, do you? I want—so many things that I never thought I had any chance at getting.”

“You can have them,” Illya offers recklessly.

Napoleon lets out a laugh, a little gut-punched sound, then kisses him quickly again. “Come to bed.”

Illya flushes hotly, feels his hand tremble, then still. He feels—eager, awkward, mortified. Entirely too aware of how out of his depth he is here. “I don’t—I haven’t—”

“Just to sleep,” Napoleon adds, and pulls back. He scans Illya’s blushing face, and whatever he sees there makes him smile. Gently, uncharacteristically so. “Not that I’d object to anything more. But it can wait until your ribs aren’t broken.”

“Cracked,” Illya corrects.

“Semantics. Come on.”

He’s still smiling when he offers Illya a hand up, and Illya finds himself smiling back as he reaches up to take it.


End file.
